by Anne Marsh
Still, it’s my job to protect my pack, and keeping tabs on Poppy is what Jace ordered. We’re not hurting her, just scaring her and conducting a little look-and-see. As long as she stays oblivious about the real wolves in the bayou, she’ll be fine. Fine is good. It’s fucking great. Not like most people do better than that.
The notebook doesn’t contain anything out of the ordinary, not at first glance. Most of it looks like scientific notes and observations—exactly what I’d expect from a biologist camped out in the bayou on a wolf hunt. She’s got lists of times, places, and dates where she discovered what she rightly believes is wolf scat. Poppy’s life is literally shit.
I can tell when she gets bored, though, because she starts doodling in the margin. Poppy can’t draw, but there are pages and pages decorated with almost indecipherable sketches of trees and flowers. And lists. Fuck me, but Poppy likes lists. She’s got lists of what appear to be places to go. Lists of plant names. Something that’s either a grocery list or a list of crap she’s sworn off because it includes five different kinds of chips. Other stuff I can’t identify. I turn the pages. List after list after fucking list. She may not be much in the way of drawing, but she’d make one hell of a librarian because the girl can alphabetize.
“You still with me?”
“Yeah,” I growl, turning another page. Some kind of rose or—I squint—swamp lily doodle sprawls across both pages. “I just don’t like this. She’s not onto anything much. Got a bunch of shit samples she’s picked up to analyze and she’s watching those spots. We know where she’ll be, so we just tell the brothers to run elsewhere.”
“Thought you liked hunting,” Jace says slowly. “Being out there in the bayou.”
Jace isn’t wrong, but there’s something about Poppy. She’s not just another target. My wolf doesn’t look at her and see prey—my wolf and I see something more. Not sure what the fuck’s going on here, but she’s different.
A small squeal from the bathroom followed by the sound of the water cutting off tells me that Poppy doesn’t follow directions well. Bet her nipples are fucking diamonds now. Got all sorts of ideas about how to warm them up, licking and squeezing. Coming all over her pretty tits. Yeah. Fucking bad idea because she’d run screaming if I so much as laid a finger on her. I tuck her stuff back into her bag.
“She’ll be out soon,” I tell Jace.
He grunts. “Where the fuck did you put her?”
“My place. Shower.” I shrug, even though Jace can’t see me, and slide her notebooks back inside her bag. “Only got so much hot water and it doesn’t sound like Poppy’s a fan of the cold.”
“Is that part of the scare tactic?” he drawls. “Bringing her home with you?”
“Boat wasn’t enough for you?”
“Keep her out of the bayou,” he says. “If she keeps running around, setting up cameras and taking photos, we’ll miss something at some point. She’s way too curious, and she’s got some kind of grant that she has to produce data for. You stick to her, and make sure she’s staying out of our business.”
“I’m on it.”
Jace has a point. When no wolves—and no more scat—show up on the game trails Poppy’s got staked out, she’ll cast a wider net. Since there’s no obvious evidence of wolves that I can see in her bag, there’s no problem yet.
I beat feet for the side of the house and turn the hose on Poppy’s boots. Then for good measure, I strip down and turn the cold water on myself. The first second is deceptively warm from sitting in the tubing in the sun, but then the arctic chill hits. Dick frozen into submission, I pad up the stairs and head for my bedroom. Poppy’s not gonna feel like a meet-and-greet with a naked werewolf, so I need clothes. I grab the first pair of jeans I lay hands on—because it’s not like I’ve got more than three choices anyhow—and drag them on. And then I retreat downstairs.
She’ll have to come looking for me at some point, and I’ll be ready.
Poppy
I hightail it out of Gator’s bathroom. My wet hair is one big clean tangle. I’m not sure I could get a brush through it even if Gator owned one—the only item in his bathroom besides toilet paper is that lonely bar of Irish Spring. It and I should bond, seeing as how we’re both single and lacking. I finger-comb the mess as best I can and plait it into a loose braid.
My next step is to shut down the skin show I’ve got going on. Since my own clothes are both wet and muddy, I’m hoping for miracles from the stack of dry things Gator pressed on me. My hair and my skin are squeaky clean, so there’s no way I’m slipping back into my old things if he’s given me an option. And he has, although I’m not sure how I feel about them.
Okay.
I know exactly how I feel.
I’m holding a pair of men’s boxer briefs in a nice dark navy blue. I’ve also got his Hanes and a brown and green flannel shirt that is blessedly huge. Showering was a terrible idea. I should have kept my mud armor and insisted on going straight back to Baton Rouge. You know. As much as the girl without a boat can insist that the guy she hit drop everything he’s doing to give her a lift. Despite Gator’s grumpiness, he seems genuinely willing to help—so I think he would have done it, and now I’ve missed my chance. Instead, I’m about to wear his boxers to prance around in public. I’m sure there’s a moral to this story that I’ll appreciate much later (like when I’m back in my own place and wearing my own underpants).
A faint sound from outside the bathroom door has me jerking my borrowed clothes on fast. Not that I think Gator would come busting in here, but standing around naked feels wrong. And more than a little dangerous. I hastily button the shirt up to my throat, take a quick peek in the mirror (my ass is covered but I’m not winning any fashion prizes), and carefully crack the door.
The coast is clear.
There’s nowhere obvious to stick my dirty towel, so I settle for folding it up and setting it on the bathroom counter. Then I suck in a nice, calming breath and exit the bathroom. See? I’m one step closer to Baton Rouge and home already. The bathroom adjoins a large bedroom. This must be where Gator sleeps because there’s a mattress on the floor, barely visible beneath a pile of sheets and a mountain of pillows. Other than those basics, the room appears to be entirely empty. Gator takes minimalism to new levels.
Another dozen steps bring me to the bedroom door. I’m getting closer to my end goal all the time. The door’s open, too, which makes leaving even easier. I mean, given the size of this place, I probably should have dropped a trail of breadcrumbs so I could Hansel and Gretel my way back to the dock. When I reach the top of the grand staircase that swoops and curls its way down to the main floor, Gator’s waiting for me.
He has his back against the wall, thick arms crossed over his chest. Somehow he fits this place. He’s like an enormous stone gargoyle or some kind of ever-vigilant guard. Or maybe it’s the fact that he looks like Mr. Big, Dark, and Scary thanks to the combination of ink, snarl, and scar. Would it kill him to smile a little?
I hold onto that thought while I start down the staircase. I’m a little worried that I’m flashing him my boxer-covered beaver because my borrowed shirt is tent-like and seems to take on a life of its own, floating and bouncing around me as I descend. It’s like I’m playing Scarlett O’Hara in some kind of weird, alternate universe and the crinoline has been replaced with lumberjack check. Eh. I can work with that. I pluck the corners of the shirt between my fingers and sweep downward for all I’m worth.
“Tomorrow is another day,” I declaim in my best faux Southern accent.
The corners of his mouth quirk up. “Should I give a damn?”
He knows my movie. I don’t know why I’m so shocked—or pleased. I think about it for a moment, and that’s definitely a thread of warm happy in my belly. Or possibly it’s something else, just a little further south, but I’m so not going there. It’s not like I thought Gator was a total beast (or not for long, at any rate), but I didn’t expect him to tease. Or to have awesome taste in movies.
>
If I were more coordinated, I’d twirl or slide down the bannister—but not falling off the steps and landing on my borrowed-briefs-covered ass is paramount. That almost-smile of his is something else. I stare at his mouth and almost miss a step. Maybe he’s not eternally grump. Maybe…
Back it up.
He still makes me nervous. He also sort of makes my non-existent panties wet. My borrowed clothes are all way too huge on me, and it’s more than a little weird thinking about where my outfit was last. Like… hanging on the very delicious clothes rack called Gator. I’m wearing the man’s briefs, for crying out loud. He hands me a wadded up stack of denim when I reach the bottommost step. Figures he wouldn’t be bringing me flowers. I shake out the mess and discover I’ve been gifted with a pair of men’s jeans. The bottoms have been hacked off and it’s just possible I’ll be able to keep them up with a belt. Or a rope. Possibly a tremendous dose of prayer. It beats going bare ass.
I wiggle into my new pants, trying to pretend it’s not awkward as hell, doing a reverse strip tease in front of Gator. He silently hands me a belt as soon as I’ve got my borrowed britches in place. I read a book once where the hero did all kinds of really dirty things to the heroine with a belt buckle and some downright erotic ingenuity. I had no idea you could fit a big metal object inside a hoo-ha or that I’d vicariously enjoy the idea so much. The heroine sure as hell did, and this thing in my hand is just about…
No dirty thoughts.
“Can we head back to Baton Rouge?”
He shoves off the wall. “Right now?”
“Yes, please.” I check his face, watching his eyes for signs of irritation. He could have other plans, plans that don’t involve chauffeuring my ass across the bayou. It’s not his fault that I’m boatless—he’s definitely the one doing me a favor here so I need to be flexible. But the day’s getting on. I have commitments. A cat to feed. A pressing need to be somewhere familiar.
“Okay,” he says. Mr. Agreeable must be the Jekyll to Mr. Grumpy’s Hyde because he bends down, snags my pack off the floor, and heads out the door. Just like that.
Gator
I let myself stare all I want as we head down to the dock. I’m gonna have the bluest balls of any wolf, but right now? Totally fucking worth it. I swear I heard a heavenly chorus start pounding out the hallelujahs when Poppy came down my stairs.
This big bad wolf’s gonna eat her up.
So maybe I’m being unrealistic about the amount of self-control I possess, but I wasn’t ready for what I saw. She’s fucking gorgeous. The kind of face you see on the Jumbotron in Times Square. Or maybe it’s more of a shock because we’ve spent the last hour talking, and I’ve been moving in on her, touching her, and I had no idea she was hiding all this beneath that layer of mud. She’s still short and fuckably curvy, but now dark hair tumbles out of a messy braid making her look like she just rolled out of bed. I immediately want to roll her back and mess her up some more. Maybe it’s the way she keeps sneaking quick peeks at me from beneath all that hair. It’s like she’s almost-but-not-quite hiding, and it makes the predator in me want to chase her. Just for the sheer pleasure of hunting—and catching—her. Fuck, I’d love to catch her, and it’s not because she has cheekbones for miles and all that soft, sweet skin. I liked her better before. Not that what she looks like should count for so much, but she’s beautiful, and beauty doesn’t hook up with the beast.
That’s not how this fairytale is going to go.
At first Poppy sort of bobs along in my wake, but turns out she’s easily distracted. She starts and stops, veering left and then right to look at shit. At one point, she downright coos over some kind of fucking iris flower. When I offer to cut it for her, she looks at me like I’ve just suggested going on a bear hunt for Winnie the Pooh to turn his honey-fed ass into a couple of steaks.
Whatever.
Since I’m the one with a boat and she’s the one in need of a ride, she’ll have to work with me. I latch onto her elbow and haul her close to me. The walk from my house to the dock isn’t all that long, and I plan to take advantage of it. Poppy smells like Irish Spring with notes of something sweeter and more her. Shoving my face in her hair and threading my fingers through the drying strands shouldn’t seem so appealing, right? She sort of bounces into my side when I tug, and I anchor her in place with an arm. I’m not sure she’s warmed up all the way from her dip in the bayou. Her skin’s cool and pebbled when my fingers dip beneath the cuff of her flannel shirt and skate over her pulse.
She makes a startled sound. I look down, checking on her. She’s staring up at me, eyes wide and startled. It’s fucking cute, but I guess she’s not used to walking arm in arm with a wolf (not that she knows what I am, but still). I can’t bring myself to let her go, but I do ease up my grip, hoping she’ll just go along with it. She’s the perfect armful.
Bringing her here was a terrible idea—not sure why I fucking did it, if we’re being honest. Kinda undoes all the scaring I did if I fish her out and make it better. I’ll have to find another way to run her out of my bayou. She’s a biologist and way too curious, so she’ll be back. Again and again. If I take another stab at that honesty thing, I have to admit I don’t mind that idea as much as I should. She’s fuckhot and funny and having her here hasn’t been bad at all. Of course, it’s been less than hour, so I’d likely change my mind if she stuck around any longer.
She’s got that whole perfect face thing going on for her. A dark mane of hair explodes around her face as it dries, thick tendrils escaping from a loose braid. The stuff’s long enough to hit her tits, which I’d really like to see. She’s got the kind of face you find on models, all interesting angles and lines. My fingers itch to trace her cheek, down the smooth skin, and over her jaw. Shove my thumb between those pretty pink lips until she bites me—or sucks me like a fucking wet dream. Her shirt bunches and gaps with each step, flashing me the freckles on her throat and shoulders. Jace is gonna pay for this because right now I’m totally down for a dirty game of connect-the-dots with my reluctant guest.
She cleans up well, but despite my borrowed belt, she has to hitch up my jeans every couple of steps. She makes the cutest fucking Raggedy Andy ever. She twists her head, looking at the arm I’ve got wrapped around her shoulders. I’d like to see her try and shift me.
“Gator?”
“Oui?”
“Thanks for the ride,” she blurts out. The rhythmic slap of water on wood means we’re almost to the dock. For one ridiculous moment I consider scooping her up and taking her back to my place. Or we could go on walkabout around the island. It’s not big, but it would take an hour and I think she’d like it. I’ve got more flowers and plants—she clearly digs that shit.
“No problem,” I growl. I’m a fucking model of restraint today. Not that she’s gonna appreciate it. “Not like you can stay here.”
She blinks quickly. “You’re not going into business as a Four Seasons?”
She says the words lightly, but there’s another note of something beneath the joke. But subtext isn’t something I do—any more than I do subtlety or people. I pick up the pace because she needs to go. I need my island to myself.
Her fingers brush my cheek. My scarred cheek.
“What happened?” she asks.
“You’re the biologist. You tell me.” Shit. Am I supposed to know that’s what she does for a living? Maybe she told me, or maybe she assumes I inferred as much from that wolf study she told me all about because she doesn’t seem surprised. She just kind of nods and then goes back to studying my face. She runs her fingers over the thick, ropey skin as if she’s measuring something.
“Alligator,” she says softly. “That must have been bad.”
“I’m here. It’s not. Came out the winner in that one.”
When we reach my boat, when I let her go, then I’ll remember that I’m a werewolf and she’s accidentally stumbled across my kind. I need to stay far, far away from her wolf-hunting, wolf-loving self. Not show h
er exactly what she’s been missing in the bayou.
Or what I’ve been missing.
My pack has changed some in the last year. A few of my brothers have mated, settled down with some good women, and I should be happy for them. And maybe I am, but I also kinda wish that it hadn’t happened. Makes me a fucking small-minded loser, but I don’t have to share that crap with anyone. The girls mean the world to my brothers, so I’d die for them. That’s my bottom line. It doesn’t matter that they’ve taken up so much space that there just might not be room for me. I’ll ride and I’ll keep an eye out.
I’m getting the sense that Poppy isn’t so different from me in that respect. That she doesn’t quite fit in, either. She’s too smart, too pretty, too filter-less. Possibly too busy fucking her boss—even I know that’s not a wise career move. Plus, Christ, when she opens her mouth, you don’t know what’s gonna come out. She’s downright awful in the people-fucking-skills department.
I think I like her.
We pad out onto the dock, my arm draped around her shoulders, our hips bumping each other with each step. She keeps trying to adjust her stride so we don’t slide against each other, but I won’t let her. Playing with her is too much fun.
As soon as we reach the boat, she grabs for her pack, trying to drag it off my shoulder. As if she could possibly move me.
“I’ve got it,” I say gruffly.
“I can do it.” Her fingers scrabble at my shoulder again. So fucking cute.
“You got a problem with accepting help?” I slide the strap down my arm and let it dangle from my fingers. It’s like playing with a wolf pup.
“I can handle my own shit. I don’t need rescuing.” Her chin comes up, and she meets my gaze head on. I can respect that, even if it pisses me off that she puts herself in danger. And teaching her a few survival skills would give me something to do besides stand guard and watch the lucky brothers enjoying their happily-ever-afters.
